Looking Back: October 3, 2012

Published: Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012 10:57 a.m. CDT

Caption

(Photo provided)

Police officers serve as pallbearers as they carry the coffin of Charles "Sid" Rowe, two-time DeKalb police chief and former Ellwood carriage man, to his final resting place in December of 1938. Rowe was chief of police from 1903 to 1904 and from 1929 to 1931. Thanks to Shayla Rowe and Tarrin Rowe Polley for the photo.

125 YEARS AGO

October 5, 1887
Typhoid fever, that much dreaded disease, especially when it follows scarlet fever, has made its appearance in Sycamore.

A local party in the northern Wisconsin woods is not finding such hunting and fishing as expected, the resort having been considerably misrepresented.

There is considerable feeling against the election of Miss Frances E. Willard as a delegate to the Methodist General Conference, by those who think her election contrary to ecclesiastical law.

It is reported that a street vendor is selling pictures of President and Mrs. Cleveland for a dime. To oblige customers who do not want both he will cut them apart and sell Mrs. Cleveland for 7 cents and her husband for 3.

The deserted appearance of our streets Wednesday must have been caused by the absence of great numbers in Chicago to see the president and other curiosities.

Tolono, in Champaign County, need not suffer for pie, since a pumpkin measuring 6 feet 2 inches in circumference and weighing 105 and a half pounds is on exhibit in that place.

The convict population of the United States, not counting the rogues out of jail, is 64,349, or one to every 930 inhabitants.

Statistics show that the consumption of sugar in the last 50 years has gone from about 15 to 70 pounds per person.

100 YEARS AGO

October 2, 1912
L.W. Duval made a clever capture of a burglar who was robbing his meat market in Kingston early last Saturday. He found the glass in the door had been broken and bided his time with a pistol in readiness. When the burglar emerged carrying a quantity of stolen goods he was confronted by the proprietor and the pistol, surrendered and was locked up.

In only one year, a vessel will be able to go to the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal.

An Eastern dentist has proposed that girls with pink teeth possess the most amiable dispositions.

The Lundberg-Shannon Hall at Kirkland will open Saturday night with first-class vaudeville and motion pictures.

Jane Addams is to address the Ann Arbor Equal Suffrage Club on Oct. 9, and the club tried to secure the largest public building in the city, University Hall at Michigan University. University officials refused permission for her to use it unless she confines her remarks to a discussion of social questions or any question not connected with politics.

A Wisconsin farmer installed for himself an electric lighting plant, lighting some 24 lamps around his property, operated with power from an ordinary farm windmill.

75 YEARS AGO

October 6, 1937
Curiosity, that strange trait that impels an insatiable desire to visit the scene of a sensational crime, has lured countless Chicagoans to Sycamore. Many drove from Chicago to have dinner in the Fargo hotel, where Charles P. Ross, wealthy Chicagoan, dined just before his abduction.

Rep. Dennis J. Collins has been named to a group of nonpartisan safety- advocates who will map out a new campaign to enact drivers license law in Illinois to reduce the death and injury toll by automobile accidents.

Under a new plan by the Illinois Emergency Relief commission, the farm bureau and the county grange unit will cooperate to find employment on farms for as many capable persons now on WPA or direct relief rolls as possible.

Threatening to “blow his head off” if he resisted, four bandits held up a farm hand on Charter Grove road three and a half miles northeast of Sycamore Thursday and took $26 from him at the point of menacing pistols.

50 YEARS AGO

October 2, 1962
Answering a report of a prowler, police found a stranger near Alternate Route 30 who could not speak coherently. It has been learned that he is Polish, but occasionally speaks a bit of English. He can think and speak of nothing but a concentration camp and a gestapo and believes all officers in uniform at the county jail are members of Hitler’s gestapo. He may have been a victim of such torture in one of Hitler’s concentration camps that the shock affected his mind.

The Sycamore Jaycees are begging for old, partially worn-out men’s shoes. The shoes will be used to train handicapped people to repair worn shoes. When proficiency is assured, that worker may either set himself up in his own shoe repair shop or get a job in a shoe factory. Shoes that are beyond repair are definitely not wanted.

The former Sycamore police chief who operates a repair service on West Elm Street suffered painful burns in an acetylene torch explosion this week. Goggles saved his eyes.

A Sycamore prowler climbing a ladder at a home on South Cross Street about midnight Tuesday left at jet speed when the home’s owner came out the door swinging with a kitchen broom. It is being debated whether the visitor was a peeping Tom or a second story burglar. First time in 30 years any yegg in Sycamore has used a ladder on a crime job. – Sycamore True Republican

25 YEARS AGO

October 7, 1987
Raymond Katz has filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the additional development of Katz Park.

Seven employees of DeKalb’s McDonald’s restaurant will make their television debut Oct. 8 in a prime time commercial sponsored by their employer. – The MidWeek